1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is concerned with certain pyrazinoic acid derivatives useful as hyperuretic agents, and with pharmaceutical compositions and methods of treating hypertension, eclampsia, uremia, and similar disorders in which the active ingredient employed is one of said pyrazinoic acid derivatives.
In mammals, including man, urea is the principal end product of nitrogen metabolism. Urea is synthesized in the body through the intermediation of the ornithine-urea cycle as from the more toxic ammonia and carbon dioxide. Some twenty-five grams of urea are synthesized in the human body per day and excreted primarily by way of the kidneys.
Urea and sodium (chloride) constitute the principal osmotically active constituents of the body. Whereas this osmotic role is similar for the two, urea and salt, they differ in important respects. Sodium chloride must be obtained from some exogenous source, and the distribution of sodium is essentially limited to extracellular fluid, including plasma water. Urea is synthetized by the body in large amounts, and its distribution is both intracellular and extracellular--being equivalent to total body water. (Potassium serves the intracellular osmotic role assumed by sodium extracellularly.)
When excess sodium is consumed, or retained by less than adequate renal function, iso-osmotic pressure is sustained by thirst-stimulated increased fluid consumption and by fluid retention which may lead to increased blood pressure and/or edema.
In the presence of impaired renal function sufficient to reduce urea excretion, its accumulation may be enough to cause increased intracellular as well as extracellular fluid accumulation, if iso-osmotic relationships are sustained by fluid accumulation. In severe circumstance, uremia may result. It is this intracellular/extracellular accumulation of fluid that is most likely to account for the symptomatology as well as the signs of uremia. At sub-uremic elevations of urea and body water levels the symptomatology may well be confused with salt retention, in which case therapy based on saluresis or hyperuresis may be used interchangeably--to some extent.
The present state of clinical knowledge recognizes that urea is filtered with plasma water at the glomeruli of the kidney and that a portion of that filtered urea undergoes passive back diffusion in the course of urine formation by the nephron. The passive back diffusion of urea can be reduced by increasing the transit rate, i.e., increasing the urine flow.
Increased transit rate can be induced (1) by expanding body fluid volume, which is self-defeating from a therapeutic standpoint; (2) with the aid of an osmotic diuretic, e.g., mannitol, which is impractical because of the need to administer large amounts parenterally, or (3) temporarily, by the use of potent saluretic agents at dosages sufficient to alter electrolyte balance.
In accordance with the present invention, it has been discovered that the mammalian kidney is capable of actively secreting and reabsorbing urea in addition to being filtered at the glomeruli and undergoing passive back diffusion.
Moreover, it has been discovered that the pyrazinoic acid derivatives utilized in the present invention are capable of inhibiting the active renal tubular reabsorption of urea, predominantly; whereas other pyrazinoic acid derivatives such as the fluoro analog of amiloride inhibit preponderantly active tubular secretion of urea without significantly inhibiting active reabsorption of urea. In so doing they lower urea blood levels and increase the osmotic concentration of urine as indications of their capability of influencing osmotically modulated functions of cells and cell membranes. These may thus be called osmoregulatory agents to identify their role in therapy. Their usefulness is considered to extend from the management of mild hypertension to the neurological symptomatology of malignant or severe hypertension, of eclampsia and/or uremia.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Cragoe U.S. Pat. No. 3,313,813 describes 3-amino-5,6-disubstituted-pyrazinoyl guanidines and their use as diuretic, natriuretic agents which selectively enhance the excretion of sodium ions without causing an increase in excretion of potassium ions.
Benos et al. in V. Gen. Physiol. 68(1): 43-63 (1976) describe the effect of amiloride and some of its analogs on cation transport in isolated frog skin and thin lipid membranes.
However, none of the above references in any way suggests the use of the particular pyrazinoic acid derivative hyperuretic agents utilized in the present invention for treating hypertension, eclampsia, uremia, and the like, since these references fail to suggest the hyperuretic activity of said pyrazinoic acid derivatives, and since said derivatives do not have sufficient saluretic and antikaluretic activity to be useful in accordance with the requirements described in said references.